they always said that sex would change you
by Ellipsis the Great
Summary: Jim smiles that crooked smile and says "Hey, baby, ever wonder if two heads really are better than one?" he feels...kind of awesome, even though he knows Jim'd never say that if he wasn't too drunk to tell the difference between a woman and a transexual.


_**they always said that sex would change you**_

_**Summary:**__ When Jim smiles that crooked smile and says "Hey, baby, you ever wonder if two heads really are better than one?" he feels…kind of awesome, even though he knows Jim would never say that to him if he wasn't too drunk to tell the difference between a woman and a transsexual._

_**DISCLAIMER:**__Star Trek and everything affiliated with it belongs to Gene Roddenberry, JJ Abrams, and all those other cool cats who own it. The title was shamelessly stolen from the Dresden Dolls song 'Sex Changes.' All I own is the plot…_

_**Rating:**__ T_

Jocelyn thinks it's disgusting, when she finds out.

He thinks maybe that's when things between them started to sour. He knows that she killed every hope he had for making it work after she found out, because she starts treating him differently. She acts like she thinks she can 'fix' him. Like he wants to be fixed.

He doesn't tell her that what he's doing makes him feel fixed—that her idea of 'fixed' makes him feel even more broken—but he pretends to do what she wants. She divorces him when she realizes one day that he's not 'fixed' at all; that he's just gotten better at hiding it from her. And a big part of him is relieved that she finally ended it, because he's sick of the whole charade.

He leaves Georgia because people know him, there. He thinks about going to California, but the very idea of resigning himself to the state 'for people like him' chafes, so he just picks a direction and drives.

He ends up in Bumfuck, Iowa, where he meets some asshole named Christopher Pike who convinces him—well, convinces him while he's in a drunken stupor—that Starfleet is a good idea. When he wakes up the next day, he's got a hangover that feels like it might just kill him, especially coupled with the fear that's clawing at his insides at the very thought of having to ride in a shuttle.

Then again, Starfleet's all about acceptance and finding other cultures, and maybe he'll get lucky and find a culture where he would be considered _normal_.

So he gets on the shuttle (against his better judgment, but a few sips from his hip flask mostly changes that) and literally gets forced into a seat next to this kid Jim Kirk.

And Jim is kind of wonderful. He doesn't roll his eyes and scoff at his fear like Jocelyn usually did, or try to make him face it like she sometimes did. Jim just smiles that pretty smile of his and talks to him and by the end of the shuttle ride he's found himself with a best friend who just kind of accepts that part of him.

It's…nice. Beyond nice, even, but he's still burning from Jocelyn's rejection, so he can't—or doesn't—tell Jim about…_that_.

And even though he's been thinking of Starfleet as a new start—and sees people like him wandering around on campus every once in a while—he falls back into old habits and keeps on hiding it, which is a lot easier than he'd like. When the pressure of hiding it gets to be too much, he sneaks off campus and indulges himself, and sometimes Jim even comments about how much less grumpy he is the next day.

When Jim decides—he doesn't ask, of course, because this is Jim Kirk—that they're going to be roommates, he figures the jig is up. He's absolutely certain that any time now Jim's gonna come home a little too soon and catch him. But against all odds, he's able to hide it.

Well…he's able to hide it until their final year, when Jim finally does walk in on him while he's changing.

Jim's drunk, though. Doesn't seem to notice that he is who he is; seems to think he's his own date, which is…odd.

And when Jim smiles that crooked smile and says "Hey, baby, you ever wonder if two heads really are better than one?" he feels…kind of awesome, even though he knows Jim would never say that to him if he wasn't too drunk to tell the difference between a woman and a transsexual.

He find of figures that he's lucked out, though, until Jim walks in the next day and says, "That wasn't some hot date, was it?"

He gulps a little, jaw clenching, and shakes his head. He feels sick to his stomach; he's already lost his wife and his practice and his old friends and his home and, shit, his _planet_.

"That was you, wasn't it?"

A nod. He can't lose Jim. He can't—

"Oh." Jim says.

"Oh?" He repeats, eyebrows furrowing together.

"Oh." Jim says again, then frowns and cocks his head to one side, eyes sliding up and down his figure like he's a puzzle piece that won't quite go where it's supposed to. "How come you don't always dress like that?"

"What do you mean why don't I—it's not _normal_, Jim." He says, and wonders why he's arguing for Jim to treat him like Jocelyn did instead of just feeling relieved and going with it and hoping Jim doesn't wise up and start giving him _those looks_.

Jim just rolls his eyes and shrugs. "How come you haven't gotten the surgery, yet? There's an ensign in engineering who did—I mean, it was the other way around, but…"

He can't do anything but stare, even though Jim has trailed off and is staring back at him expectantly. And when he finally can move again, all he can do is step closer and throw his arms around Jim's neck and hold him tight and breathe slowly to keep himself from crying.

"Bones?" Jim says. "Bones, are you okay?"

"Yeah." He says, pulling away and laughing a little as he wipes his eyes. "Just…fuck, Jim, nobody else has ever…I mean, Jocelyn always said I was a freak for wanting to…for dressing like…you know, _that_."

Jim blinks at him. "Bones, if wearing those clothes makes you feel uncomfortable, than you're kind of a freak for making yourself wear what you're wearing now. Everybody should wear what makes them feel comfiest."

He jumps a little when Jim slings an arm around his shoulder.

"Y'know, you can request the female uniform, if you want." Jim says. "And, dude, this is _San Francisco_. I'll bet we can find a surgeon _easy_."

Slowly, still only half believing what he's hearing, he feels himself start to smile.

(I'MADOCTOR,NOTAPAGEBREAK)

He still doesn't feel comfortable enough to wear his real clothes in public, or to request the female uniform. But after that conversation, when he and Jim go way off-campus to get drunk, he doesn't bother wearing men's clothes. And although Jim does a double take the first time he wears a dress and high-heeled boots, there are no disparaging comments or sour faces. Just a smile and an offered arm that makes him roll his eyes and shove Jim into a wall.

By the time of the Destruction of Vulcan, he's started taking estrogen pills. A week after the _Enterprise_ leaves Earth to start her first five year mission, he wears the female uniform for the first time—Chapel punches the first and only ensign to wolf whistle at him, then says "About damn time," which he decides not to read into for his own peace of mind.

He wears the female uniform more and more after that, and when they take a week of shore leave two years into their long mission, he and Jim drink bourbon and lounge a few feet away while all of his male clothes go up in flames.

After that, not even official transmissions refer to her as a 'he,' anymore, and she has her name legally changed to Leandra. And a few months later they _actually_ stumble onto a planet where sex changes are almost commonplace, and where the surgery is almost instantaneous (like someone had a transporter accident and figured out how to cause one for people who actually weren't adverse to such a change). Jim takes her to an alien-friendly clinic and squeezes her hand right before they wheel her back into the operating room.

She wakes up in a hospital bed the next day, and when she lifts the blanket up there's no awkward lump at her crotch, but two beautiful ones on her chest, instead. She looks up when someone—Jim—enters the room, and puts her arms around herself out of reflex.

He sits down next to her and holds up a mirror, and stays unnaturally quiet (for Jim, anyhow) while she looks in it at the smoother lines of her face, the leaner shape of her shoulders, the way she still looks like herself, but…_more_ like herself at the same time, which seems strange but somehow fits.

She reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, even though it's too short to stay there because—female on the inside or not—she has always viewed long hair as impractical in her line of work. Her eyes flicker away from the mirror and up to Jim's, and she smiles uneasily.

"Pretty—" She stops and clears her throat, heart fluttering at the _rightness_ she feels at hearing a soft alto instead of a deep baritone. "Pretty weird, huh?"

Jim leans forward and traces the contours of her face with his finger before he pulls her toward himself and kisses her forehead. He whispers something into her hair, and she starts to cry because even after this long she can't quite believe she could ever be so lucky—to have her dreams realized, to have _Jim_, to have everything she's hardly ever dared to hope for.

"You're beautiful, Bones."

The End.

_A/N: I put my playlist on shuffle the other day and 'Sex Changes' by the Dresden Dolls came on. I've listened to that song a thousand other times, but this time as I was listening this whole story just kind of wrote itself in my head._

_As always, a thousand apologies for any mistakes I've made, particularly in regards to actual transsexual behavior and/or experiences—the closest I've ever come to meeting/knowing a transsexual is the movie 'Beautiful Boxer' (which I fully recommend), so all of this is completely from my own mind (and maybe a little Google)._


End file.
